Part 7

So matters remained till the morning, when the three fugitives from Parashino made their appearance before my grandfather as he sat on his stoop. They had spent the first day concealed in an inaccessible swamp which joined on to the stackyards of Parashino; in the evening they learnt from some one in the village exactly what had happened, and made their way straight to Bagrovo, considering Stepan Mihailovitch as the only possible protector and champion of Praskovya Ivanovna. His feelings may be imagined when he heard what had happened at Parashino. He loved his one cousin not less, perhaps more, than his own daughters. The image of Parasha half-killed by her ruffian of a husband, of Parasha confined in a cellar for three days and perhaps dead already, presented itself so vividly to his lively imagination that he sprang up like one demented, and rushed down the courtyard and through the village, summoning his retainers and labourers in accents of frenzy. Those who were not in the cottages came running from the fields. When all were assembled, they were full of sympathy for their master's passionate despair, and cried with one voice that they would go on foot, if need be, to the rescue of Praskovya Ivanovna. In a short time three cars, drawn by teams of spirited horses from the stables of Bagrovo, and carrying a dozen men chosen for strength and courage, were galloping along the road to Parashino. The party included the fugitives from Parashino, and were armed with guns and swords, pikes and pitchforks. Later in the day two more cars followed to reinforce Stepan Mihailovitch; the men were armed in the same way; the horses were the best the peasants could produce. By the evening of the second day, the vanguard was within seven _versts_ of Parashino. They fed the jaded horses, and in the first light of the summer dawn dashed into the wide courtyard and drove straight up to the cellar. It was close to the rooms occupied by Kurolyessoff. Stepan Mihailovitch jumped out and began to beat his fist against the wooden door of the cellar. A voice faintly asked, "Who is there?" My grandfather recognised his cousin's voice; dropping a tear of joy that he had found her alive, and crossing himself, he called out in a loud voice, "Thank God! It is your cousin, Stepan Mihailovitch; you are safe now!" He sent off the servants from Choorassovo to get ready Praskovya Ivanovna's carriage, and posted six armed men to defend the gate, while he himself and the rest of his men applied axes and crowbars to the cellar-door. It gave way in a moment; and Stepan Mihailovitch himself carried out Praskovya Ivanovna, placed her on a car between himself and her faithful maid, and drove unmolested out of the courtyard with all his retainers. The sun was rising as they drove past the church, and his first beams lit up the Cross on the roof. It was just six days since Praskovya Ivanovna had prayed with her eyes fixed on that Cross; and now she prayed again and thanked God for her deliverance. The carriage caught them up, when they were five _versts_ from Parashino; and Stepan Mihailovitch moved his cousin into the carriage and drove with her back to Bagrovo.

But I shall be asked, "How did all this happen? did no one see it? what had become of Kurolyessoff and his trusty retainers? is it possible that he was unaware of it or absent at the time?" No: the liberation of Praskovya Ivanovna took place before many witnesses; and Kurolyessoff was at home and knew what was going on, but did not venture to show his face.

The explanation is quite simple. His men had spent the whole evening carousing with their master, and some of them were so drunk that they could not be roused. There was one sober man, a complete abstainer and a favourite. He wakened his master with some difficulty, and, trembling with fear, told him of the raid of Stepan Mihailovitch and the guns pointing straight at the windows. "But where are all our fellows?" asked Kurolyessoff. "Some are asleep, and others are hiding," said the man; but this was not true; for the drunken rabble was mustering near the outside steps. Kurolyessoff thought a moment; then with a gesture of despair he said, "Let her go, and the devil go with her! Lock the door, go to the window, and watch what happens." In a few minutes, the man cried out, "They are carrying away the mistress!--They're off!"--"Go to your bed," said his master; then he rolled himself up in his blankets and either fell asleep or made a pretence of it.

Yes, right has a moral strength before which wrong must bend, for all its boldness. Kurolyessoff knew the stout heart and fearless courage of Stepan Mihailovitch, and he knew that he himself was in the wrong; and therefore, in spite of his furious temper and unscrupulous impudence, he let his victim go without a struggle.

Tenderly and carefully Stepan Mihailovitch conveyed the sufferer, whom he had always loved and who now roused in him deep sympathy and a still greater affection. No question passed his lips on the journey; and, when he brought her in safety to Bagrovo, he forbade his womankind to trouble her with inquiries. But in a fortnight Praskovya Ivanovna was herself again, thanks to her strong constitution and high spirit; and then Stepan Mihailovitch determined to cross-examine her. In order to act, he must know the real truth, and he never trusted secondhand information. She told him the whole truth with perfect frankness, but begged that he would keep it from his family and that she should be asked no questions by any one else. She put herself altogether in his hands; but she feared his hot temper and implored him not to take vengeance on Kurolyessoff. She said positively that, on reflection, she had decided not to bring shame on her husband, or to stain the name which she must continue to bear throughout her life. She added that she now repented of the words which had burst from her lips at her first interview with Kurolyessoff at Parashino, and that nothing would induce her to make a complaint to the Governor against him. Yet she considered it her duty to rescue her serfs from his cruelty, and therefore intended to cancel the document which gave him authority over her estates. She asked Stepan Mihailovitch to take over the management himself, and also to write to Kurolyessoff demanding the document and stating that, if he refused to give it up, she would take legal steps to cancel it. She asked Stepan Mihailovitch to express this in plain terms but without any abusive epithets; and she offered to sign the letter herself, to make it more convincing. I should mention that she could hardly read and write her native language. Stepan Mihailovitch loved his cousin so well that he bridled his rage and assented to her wishes. But he would not hear of taking over the management. "No, my dear," he said; "I don't care to meddle in other people's affairs, and I don't want your relations to be saying that I feather my own nest while looking after your multitude of serfs. The land will be badly managed in your hands, I don't doubt; but you are rich and will have enough. I don't mind saying in the letter that I am to take over the management; that will give your sweet pet a turn! All the rest you ask shall be done."

Strict orders were accordingly issued to the womankind to ask no questions of the lady. My grandfather wrote the letter to Kurolyessoff with his own hand, Praskovya Ivanovna added her signature, and a special messenger was despatched with it to Parashino. But, while they were considering and wondering and writing at Bagrovo, all was already over at Parashino. The messenger returned on the fourth day and reported that, by God's will, Kurolyessoff had died suddenly and was already buried.

Stepan Mihailovitch heard the news first. Involuntarily he crossed himself and said, "Thank God!" And so said all his family: in spite of their former weakness for Kurolyessoff, they had long looked on him with horror as a criminal and a ruffian. With Praskovya Ivanovna it was different. Judging by their own feelings, they all supposed she would welcome the news, and told her at once. But, to the surprise of every one, she was utterly prostrated by it and became ill again; and, when her strength got the better of the illness, her depression and wretchedness were extreme: for some weeks she wept from morning till night, and she grew so thin that Stepan Mihailovitch was alarmed. No one could understand the cause of such intense sorrow for a husband whom she could not love and who had treated her so brutally--"a disgrace to human nature," as they called him. But there was an explanation, and this is it.

Many years later, my mother, who was a great favourite with Praskovya Ivanovna, was talking with her of past days--a thing which Praskovya Ivanovna generally avoided--and in the openhearted frankness of their conversation she asked: "Please tell me, aunt, why you took on so after your husband's death. In your place, I should have said a prayer for his soul, and felt quite cheerful." "You are a little fool, my dear," answered Praskovya Ivanovna: "I had loved him for fourteen years and could not unlearn my feeling in one month, even though I had found out what he was; and, above all, I grieved for his soul: he had no time to repent before he died."

After six weeks, Praskovya Ivanovna's good sense mastered her grief to some extent; and she consented, or, I should rather say, did not refuse, to travel with all the Bagroff family to Parashino, in order to attend a memorial service at Kurolyessoff's grave. To the general surprise, she dropped no tear at Parashino or during the sad ceremony; but one may imagine how much this effort cost her, in her condition of sorrow and bodily weakness. By her wish, only a few hours were spent at Parashino, and she did not enter that part of the house where her husband had lived and died.

It is not difficult to guess the cause of Kurolyessoff's sudden death. When Stepan Mihailovitch had rescued his cousin from the cellar, the people at Parashino all plucked up heart, believing that the end of Kurolyessoff's rule had come. They all supposed that the owner of Bagrovo, who was in the position of a father to their mistress, would turn her husband neck and crop out of a place that did not belong to him. No one dreamed that their young mistress, insulted and beaten and half-starved in an underground cellar in her own house, would fail to appeal to the law for redress. Every day they expected an irruption from Stepan Mihailovitch with the sheriff at his back; but week followed week, and no one came. Kurolyessoff was as drunken and violent as ever: every one of his retainers he flogged till they were half-dead, for having betrayed him, not sparing even the sober man who had wakened him on the night of the rescue; and he boasted that Praskovya Ivanovna had given up to him the title-deeds of her estates. It was past the power of human endurance; and the future seemed hopeless.[32] Two of the scoundrels, who had been favourites, and, strangely enough, two who had suffered less than the rest from his cruelty, ventured upon a horrible crime. They poisoned him with arsenic, putting it into a decanter of _kvass_, which Kurolyessoff generally emptied during the night; and they put in so much, that he was dead in two hours. As they had taken no one into their confidence, the catastrophe startled and terrified the whole household. The servants suspected one another, but the real criminals remained unknown for some time. Six months later one of them became desperately ill and confessed his crime before he died; and his accomplice, though the dying man had not betrayed him, made off and was never seen again.

[32] From here to the end of the paragraph was removed by the censor from the early editions of the work.

The sudden death of Kurolyessoff would certainly have been followed by an inquest, but for the presence at Parashino of a young clerk called Mihaila Maximitch, who had only lately come to the place. By cleverness and good management, he contrived to get the affair hushed up. He became later Praskovya Ivanovna's man of business and the chief agent on all her estates, and enjoyed her full confidence. Under the name of "Mihailushka" he was known to all and sundry in the Governments of Simbirsk and Orenburg. He was a man of remarkable ability; though he made a large fortune, he lived discreetly and modestly for many years; but, when he received his freedom on the death of his mistress and lost his wife to whom he was much attached, he took to drinking and died in poverty. One of his sons, if I remember rightly, entered the official class and was eventually ennobled.

I should not conceal the fact, that forty years later, when I became the owner of Parashino, I found the recollection of Kurolyessoff's management still fresh among the peasants, and they spoke of him with gratitude, because they felt every day the advantage of many of his arrangements. His cruelty they had forgotten, and they had felt it less than his personal attendants; but they remembered his power of distinguishing guilt and innocence, the honest workman and the shirker; they remembered his perfect knowledge of their needs and his constant readiness to give them help. The old men smiled as they told me that Kurolyessoff used often to say: "Steal and rob as you please, if you keep it dark; but, if I catch you, then look out!"

When she went back to Bagrovo, Praskovya Ivanovna, soothed by the sincere and tender love of her cousin and by the assiduous attentions of his womankind (whom she did not much like but who expected great favours and benefits from her) gradually got over the terrible blow she had suffered. Her good health came back, and her peace of mind; and at the end of a year she resolved to go back to Choorassovo. It was painful to Stepan Mihailovitch to part with his favourite: her whole nature appealed to him, and he had become thoroughly accustomed to her society. Not once in his whole life was he in a rage with Praskovya Ivanovna. But he did not try to keep her: on the contrary, he pressed her to go as soon as possible. "It's no sort of life for you here, my dear," he used to say; "it's a dull place, though we have got accustomed to it. You are young still"--she was thirty--"and rich and used to something different. You should go back to Choorassovo, and enjoy your fine house and splendid garden and the springs. You have plenty of kind neighbours there, rich people who live a gay life. It is possible that God will send you better fortune in a second venture; you won't want for offers." Praskovya Ivanovna put off her departure from day to day--so hard did she find it to part from the cousin who had saved her life and been her benefactor from her childhood. At last the day was fixed. Early on the previous morning, she came out to join Stepan Mihailovitch, who was sitting on his stoop and thinking sad thoughts. She kissed and embraced him; the tears came to her eyes as she said: "I feel all your love for me, and I love and respect you like a daughter. God sees my gratitude; but I wish that men should see it too. Will you let me bequeath to your family all my mother's property? What I have from my father will come to your son in any case. My relations on my mother's side are rich, and you know that they have given me no reason to reward them with my wealth. I shall never marry. I wish the Bagroff family to be rich. Say yes, my dear cousin, and you will comfort me and set my mind at rest." She threw herself at his feet and covered with kisses the hands with which he was trying to raise her up. "Listen, my dear," said Stepan Mihailovitch in a rather stern voice: "You don't know me aright. That I should covet what does not belong to me, and cut out the rightful heirs to your estates--no! that shall never be, and never shall any one be able to say that of Stepan Bagroff! Mind you don't ever mention it again. If you do, we shall quarrel; and it will be the first time in our lives."

Next day Praskovya Ivanovna left Bagrovo and began her own independent life at Choorassovo.

FRAGMENT III: THE MARRIAGE OF THE YOUNG BAGROFF

Many years passed by and much happened during that time--famine and plague, and the rebellion of Pugatchoff.[33] The landowners of the Orenburg district scattered before the bands of the usurper, and Stepan Mihailovitch also made off with his family, first to Samara, and then down the Volga to Saratoff and as far off as Astrakhan. But by degrees all disturbances passed over and calmed down and were forgotten. Children became boys, boys became men, and men came to grey hairs; and among these last was Stepan Mihailovitch. He saw this himself, but he hardly believed it. He would sometimes allude to the ravages of time, but he did so without uneasiness, as if there were no personal reference to himself. Yet my grandfather had ceased to be his old self: his herculean strength and tireless activity had gone for ever. This sometimes surprised him; but he went on living precisely in the old way--eating and drinking to his heart's content, and dressing with no regard to the weather, though he sometimes suffered for this neglect. Little by little, his keen clear eye became clouded and his great voice lost its power; his fits of anger were rarer, but so were his bright and happy moods. His elder daughters had all married, and the oldest had been dead some time, leaving a daughter of three years old. Aksinya,[34] the second, had lost one husband and married again; Elizabeth, a clever but arrogant woman, had somehow married a General Yerlykin, who was old and poor and given to drinking; and Alexandra had found herself a husband in Ivan Karatayeff, well-born, young, and rich, but a passionate lover of the Bashkirs and their wandering life--a true Bashkir himself in mind and body. The youngest daughter, Tanyusha, had not married. The only son[35] was now twenty-six, a handsome youth with a complexion of lilies and roses: his own father used to say of him, "Put a petticoat on him, and he'd be a prettier girl than any of his sisters!" Though his wife, Arina Vassilyevna, shed bitter tears and would not be comforted, Stepan Mihailovitch sent his son into the Army as soon as he was sixteen. He served for three years, and, owing to the influence of Mihail Kurolyessoff, acted as aide-de-camp for part of the time to Suvoroff. But Suvoroff left the district of Orenburg and was succeeded by a German general (I think his name was Treubluth); and he sentenced the young man to a severe flogging, from which his entire innocence, if not his noble birth, should have protected him. His mother nearly died of grief, when she heard it; and even my grandfather thought this was going too far. He withdrew his son from the Army and got him a place in the law court at Ufa, where he earned promotion by long and zealous service.

[33] Pugatchoff was a Cossack, who raised a formidable rebellion in East Russia; taken prisoner by Suvoroff, he was executed at Moscow in 1775.

[34] The popular form of Xenia; the diminutive is Aksyutka.

[35] The author's father.

I cannot pass over in silence a strange fact that I have noticed: most of the Germans and foreigners in general who held posts in the Russian service in those days were notorious for their cruelty and love of inflicting corporal punishment. The German who punished young Bagroff so cruelly was a Lutheran himself, but at the same time a great stickler for all the rites and ceremonies of the Russian Church. This historic incident in the annals of the Bagroff family happened in the following way. The general ordered a service to be performed in the regimental chapel on the eve of some unimportant saint's-day; he was always present himself on these occasions, and all officers were expected to attend. It was summer, and the chapel windows were open. Suddenly, a voice in the street outside struck up a popular song. The general rushed to the window: three subalterns were walking along the street, and one of them was singing. He ordered them under arrest and sentenced each of them to 300 lashes. My unfortunate father, who was not singing but merely walking with his friends, pleaded his noble birth; but the general said with a sneer, "A noble is bound to show special respect to divine service"; and then the brute himself looked on till the last stripe was inflicted on the innocent youth. This took place in a room next the chapel, where the solemn singing of the choir could be distinctly heard; and the tyrant forbade his victim to cry out, "for fear of disturbing divine worship." After his punishment, he was carried off unconscious to hospital, where it was found necessary to cut off his uniform, owing to the swelling of his tender young body. It was two months before his back and shoulders healed up. What must it have cost his mother to hear such news of her only son whom she simply worshipped! My grandfather lodged a complaint in some quarter; and his son, who had sent in his papers at once, got his discharge from the Army before he left the hospital, and entered the Civil Service as an official of the fourteenth or lowest class. Eight years had now gone by, and the incident was by this time forgotten.

Alexyei Stepanitch was now living peacefully at Ufa and performing his duties there. Twice a year he paid a visit to his parents at Bagrovo, 240 _versts_ away. His life was quite uneventful. Quiet, bashful, and unassuming, this young heir to a landed estate lived on good terms with all the world, till suddenly the modest course of his existence became disturbed.